thing could be more
diverting than to hear Lena, who was almost as candid as Nature, call a
leg a "limb" or a house a "home."

We used to linger a long while over our coffee in that sunny corner. Lena
was never so pretty as in the morning; she wakened fresh with the world
every day, and her eyes had a deeper color then, like the blue flowers
that are never so blue as when they first open. I could sit idle all
through a Sunday morning and look at her. Ole Benson's behavior was now no
mystery to me.

"There was never any harm in Ole," she said once. "People need n't have
troubled themselves. He just liked to come over and sit on the draw-side
and forget about his bad luck. I liked to have him. Any company's welcome
when you're off with cattle all the time."

"But was n't he always glum?" I asked. "People said he never talked at
all."

"Sure he talked, in Norwegian. He'd been a sailor on an English boat and
had seen lots of queer places. He had wonderful tattoos. We used to sit
and look at them for hours; there was n't much to look at out there. He
was like a picture book. He had a ship and a strawberry girl on one arm,
and on the other a girl standing before a little house, with a fence and
gate and all, waiting for her sweetheart. Farther up his arm, her sailor
had come back and was kissing her. 'The Sailor's Return,' he called it."

I admitted it was no wonder Ole liked to look at a pretty girl once in a
while, with such a fright at home.

"You know," Lena said confidentially, "he married Mary because he thought
she was strong-minded and would keep him straight. He never could keep
straight on shore. The last time he landed in Liverpool he'd been out on a
two years' voyage. He was paid off one morning, and by the next he had n't
a cent left, and his watch and compass were gone. He'd got with some
women, and they'd taken everything. He worked his way to this country on a
little passenger boat. Mary was a stewardess, and she tried to convert him
on the way over. He thought she was just the one to keep him steady. Poor
Ole! He used to bring me candy from town, hidden in his feed-bag. He could
n't refuse anything to a girl. He'd have given away his tattoos long ago,
if he could. He's one of the people I'm sorriest for."

If I happened to spend an evening with Lena and stayed late, the Polish
violin-teacher across the hall used to come out and watch me descend the
stairs, muttering so threateningly that it would have